"Life isn't about finding oneself. Life is about creating yourself." - George Bernard Shaw

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Decorating for Christmas

Traditionally, I would decorate the house the day after Thanksgiving. In the last few years, I have limited my decorating to that day. If it can’t be completed on that day, then it is not going to be included. I feel like I need to consider the other end – how long will this take to undecorate??? Again it must all come down New Year’s Day. I simply choose to give no more time to it in my schedule.

This year is a bit different. I won’t be here for Christmas or New Year’s, so I certainly don’t intend to do work that I won’t be here to enjoy. I hadn’t really thought much about it, but the other day a good friend looked at me hard and jealously – even accusatorily – exclaimed, “YOU don’t have to decorate this year!”

I looked at her and smiled, “No, I don’t.”

Later, I giggled about it. I am relieved to not have decorating on my list, but I wondered at my friend. She was obviously doing more than she really wanted to this year. Why was she adding this stress to her life? Why was I relieved that I wasn’t?

The beauty is that I did choose to decorate, because I wanted to do it. But this time is just one hand made manger scene from Peru. I collect crèches and this was the one I purchased last year. It is a play on a traditional set with a modern shape. I wonder what change this chance to be simple will take and what I will choose for next year…

Here is the ceramic crèche from Peru: Mary, Joseph and the baby. Details of the pieces follow. I like to hang the Moravian Star up somewhere and let it shine all night. It seemed right in the front window with the crèche. The star actually hangs directly above the crèche, but what you see in the pictures is it’s reflection in the window.

How are you choosing to decorate this year?

If you want to share, take photos of your creation, blog about it including a link to this post and put the link to your entry here. This list will be open until New Year’s Day! (Thanks Sue for the inspiration!)

9 comments:

Beautiful creche, while new and modern it reminds me more of 50-60's modern. Colors Peru, design, danish, scandinavian? I gave up really decorating the first time I saw Santa in shorts in Texas. Hard to get inspired in such a scrubby warm place when you are use to Currier & Ives. Ditto Los Angeles. Now, who is going to see it so I do just the few things that really please me and are little fuss.

This is a really lovely creche! I never do much decorating, and I guess that's why we don't have much to decorate with. In general,I feel there's even more stress in the time before X-mas than the rest of the year, and somehow I feel like going on strike. Traveling during X-mas holidays sounds just great!

What a lovely creche! One of the things I dislike about the holidays is that I see so many women doing more than they want to do. Why do we do that to ourselves? I'm still debating about what decorating I will do - but I'll let you know when I do it!

I completely agree about the stress of the holidays. For the past few years i've tried to get my Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving to just eliminate that from December. Yet - still I long for a quiet, still Advent. I do wonder if traveling could be an answer to it!

The decorating part is fun to me, hauling boxes down from and then back into the attic is not. I have cut out Christmas stuff by at least half of what I did as a younger wife/mother. Now the visual clutter starts to get on my nerves.Your creche is very pretty.Have a great time in N.Z.

Hope you've arrived at your destination...but actually, you are probably still in transit.

We have great light in the house this morning (after some gray days) so I finally put together my post about decorations. It's not going up til Christmas Eve - so I'll come back and update the MckLinky then!!